Oedipus the King

Oedipus the King is a very complex character with a lot of layers that unfold throughout the play. He is seen in multiple ways but never the same. Once a reader can understand the play, they can understand Oedipus. Oedipus is confident, his morals are usually meant to be good, and has good and bad qualities.

First, Oedipus is a very confident man that has reasonable doubt to. At first he has reason to because he did defeat the Sphinx for the people. For example “I Oedipus whom all men call the Great.” (line 7). Oedipus has a great power to himself because of helping the people and being for the people. He wants to be a savior for his people. Second, his morals are usually meant to be good. Oedipus may not do all good for his people all the time but he always has good intentions. For example he says “…Indeed im willing to give all that you may need;” (line 10-11). In this statement he is saying that he will do everything he can to help the people with what they need. Another way he tries to find the killer even though it is him. He says in the play “..I shall try all means to take the murderer of Lauis the son of Labdacus the son of Polydorus and before him of Cadmus and before him of Agenor,”(285-288). Thirdly, He has good and bad qualities within him. Oedipus wants to be good but because of his fate he is not who he thinks he is. He would like to be the Great as everyone sees him to be but he does not know that he himself is a murderer. He tries to lay on the despair from the people on himself. For example “Speak it to all; the grief I bear, I bear it more for these than for my own heart” (lines 103-105) This is showing he wants to be a good hero and help all he can. He also has bad qualities that he did not even know. He himself is responsible for the death of his father and now is married to his mother.

In conclusion, Oedipus is a strong character that does not show himself right away to a reader. At first he may seem to be the hero...

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Oedipus Rex – Key Quotes
OPENING SCENE – TONE, LOCATION AND EXPOSITION
The action takes place in Thebes in front of the royal palace
OEDIPUS: the city
fills with incense, chants, and cries of pain?
PRIEST: For our city, as you yourself can see,
is badly shaken—she cannot raise her head
above the depths of so much surging death.
Disease infects fruit blossoms in our land,
disease infects our herds of grazing cattle,
makes women in labour lose their children.
And deadly pestilence, that fiery god,
swoops down to blast the city, emptying
the House of Cadmus, and fills black Hades
with groans and howls…
OEDIPUS - CHARACTER
OEDIPUS: My poor children, I know why you have come—
I am not ignorant of what you yearn for.
For I well know that you are ill, and yet, [60]
sick as you are, there is not one of you 70
whose illness equals mine.
OEDIPUS: I would be a hard-hearted man indeed,
if I did not pity suppliants like these.
PRIEST: Not that we count thee as the peer of heaven…
… Thou art named, and known, our life’s establisher…
OEDIPUS: ‘my heart at once
Groans for the city, and for myself, and for you…’
OEDIPUS: ‘My heavy load of care
More for their sake than for my own I bear.’
OEDIPUS: ‘So...

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